Prominent African-American clergy from around the country are featured in a new video campaign for same-sex marriage in Maryland, delivering a powerful message in defense of equality for all people.

Marylanders for Marriage Equality released the video in a social media campaign to explain that religious liberty is not threatened by Question 6, a referendum that asks voters to vote for or against the law that would legalize same-sex marriage. The faith leaders featured in the campaign are urging Marylanders to vote for the ballot issue in November. [Read Full Story]

While growing up in an African-American Baptist church, Harris Thomas was taught homosexuality is an "abomination in the eyes of God." As a young minister, he disparaged the gay lifestyle even while secretly pursuing it. Today he heads a Baltimore church that serves gay Christians of color "right where they are."

Grace Harley, too, grew up in a mainstream black church. She discovered the gay underground as a teen and lived as a lesbian for nearly 20 years. But God freed her from homosexuality, she says, a "blessing" she gladly recounts as a straight minister based in Silver Spring.

Both longtime Marylanders began their spiritual journeys in a similar place, as black Christians who felt strong same-sex attractions. Both faced rejection from family and community, and particularly forceful disapproval from fellow African-Americans, a group whose values have long been shaped by conservative religious thinking. But on a key question of the day, Thomas and Harley could not be more different. [Read Full Story]

Anthony Coy realized he was attracted to other men about the same time he became attracted to God, and it’s been a conflicting battle ever since.

He started attending an United Methodist Church the summer of his eighth grade year, and became baptized a year later. It wasn’t until his sophomore year of high school that he began to hear the messages that being gay is a sin and God doesn’t accept homosexuals. It sent his own identity into crisis.

“That’s who I was, but at the same time I was feeling things that people said were wrong. I started a period of study where I was in the Bible praying, you know, all the time that God would take it away,” said Coy. [Read Full Story]